The Grimwood

Some call it The Grimwood.

It’s Old Growth.

Ancient.

A tangled mass of creeping vines wind around thick trunks, gnarled branches and twisted limbs. Long dark leaves, broad almost black leaves, and wide deep-brown leaves mutter bitterly together in the heavy, still air. Worms and beetles, spiders and serpents are the only creatures that now scurry and slither through the sludge. Malevolence sits heavily on The Grimwood, cloaking it with despair and despite.

Once there were individual trees here, with spaces between into which light and air fell. 

Once green things grew and colours sprung joyfully in Spring.

Once birds flitted and filled the morning air with song.

Once small animals such as squirrels and chipmunks and moles climbed and chittered and dug amongst the branches and roots and leaves.

Once deer and even wolves and wild cats roamed here. 

Once this forest teemed with life.

No more.

Darkness came.

An idea. A belief. A set of rules. A philosophy.

Growth stopped. 

Other seeds were sown.

Other plants grew. Less wholesome. Less light-loving. Less welcoming to the little creatures.

The light dimmed.

As the light became less welcome the creatures slowly drifted away.

The vines took root. The thick-leaved, dark-loving, green-strangling plants spread widely, filling once open spaces. Evil aspected thorny bushes crowded out new growth; suffocated new sprouts; fouled springs and streams into stench-filled bogs.

Years passed until The Grimwood became feared by all. No one dared it. No one questioned it. All avoided it.  All feared it. All placated it. 

It must not be roused.

From it emanated a fetid air of anger, hatred, jealousy, stagnation.

The Grimwood was not satisfied. It slowly grew outward, stretching its dark roots further, contaminating and soiling once clean soil.

Then,  one day, something changed.

A small light appeared at one edge of The Grimwood. A mere pinprick. A tiny thing against the darkness. 

A shudder ran through the vast, ancient forest.

What seemed a mere child held aloft a phial. Pure beams of a light so bright none could bear to look straight at it shone from the phial through the child’s fingers. Along every beam’s path the darkness retreated, wounded, hurt beyond its imagination.  

Leaves shuddered and shivered away, trying to escape. 

The rough, jagged bark scraped and screeched and scorched, smoking as the light touched it, burned it.

The Grimwood, shocked out of complacency, reacted. Rage rippled through it, reaching toward the child with grasping, tentacles.

Unfazed, the child moved inward step by step. There was no path except the one the light made as the beams pushed the darkness back. 

Rage turned to fear.

Far away, another pinprick of light appeared in a different sector of The Grimwood.

Then another. 

And another.

The Grimwood writhed.

The lights, still minuscule against the vast ancient growth, moved forward making tiny changes. Burning narrow paths. Causing barely noticeable ripples through the Darkness. 

Yet change began.

Faintly a bird’s song sounded…